Crick Data Challenge 2025
Hackathon-style event fostering collaborations between wet lab biologists and data scientists. Hosted at the Francis Crick Institute.
Crick Data Challenge #8
12-14th November 2025 at the Francis Crick Institute, London
Are you ready to take on a challenging data problem and apply your computational skills? Want to work as part of a team to explore new ways of analysing data? Want to connect with computational scientists with diverse backgounds and expertise who share a passion for solving problems and coding challenges? Are you a data scientist or software engineer who wants to learn more about a new area?
Join our 3-day hackathon and tackle one of the projects proposed by Crick scientists!
This year’s Data Challenge is sponsored by Seqera Labs. Seqera is the driving force behind Nextflow, MultiQC, and the Seqera Platform. Their support and commitment to scientific innovation and collaboration has been instrumental in shaping this unique experience.
A sneak peak into this year’s projects
The projects for this year’s event will be revealed during the project pitch on the morning of the first day. We won’t spoil the surprises, but get ready – this year’s projects span from mitochondria, to super-resolution microscopy, to FitBits! Expect a mix of imaging, ,multi-omic, and sequencing analysis challenges that will test your creativity and coding skills in new ways. You might find yourself automating pipelines, uncovering hidden biological patterns through machine learning, or exploring new ways to visualise complex single-cell data. Whatever the challenge, this year’s line-up offers a unique chance to collaborate, learn, and push the boundaries of data-driven biomedical research!
Participant Sign-Ups are now closed
As a participant, you will join one of the various projects submitted by Crick scientists. You will work with 5-10 other participants to find a potential solution to the challenge presented.
Get in touch if you would like to ask any questions about the event or would like to discuss ideas for future projects.
How does it work?
- Crick scientists submit their projects to the data challenge.
- The organising committee selects up to 5 hackathon-ready projects.
- Data scientists (internal and external) sign up to the event. They’re given a clue about the theme of each project, but no spoilers.
- On day 1, project leaders introduce their problem and take questions from participants, after which participants form teams.
- Teams go to their private space to collaborate and hack away! Every day ends with a social activity.
- On day 3, each group gives a short wrap-up presentation on their approach to solving the problem and what they learned.
The video below will give you a glimpse of what the Crick Data Challenge is about!
Examples of previous projects include:
- Integration of multiomic datasets to identify biomarkers for non-invasive, early detection of cancer.
- Creation of a program with a user interface to design antisense oligonucleotides.
- Integration of huge amounts of cancer RNA-Seq data to identify genes that could be therapeutic targets.
- Design of a method to categorise and classify spherical cell images from a magnetic tweezer microscope system.
- Investigation of Drosophila fruit preferences using chemical, behavioural and electrophysiological data sets.
- Implementation of a streamlined pipeline for analysing highly complex, multi-dimensional imaging data.
Crick Data Challenge projects have contributed to scientific papers:
- Van Maldegem, Febe, et al., (2021). Characterisation of tumour microenvironment remodelling following oncogene inhibition in preclinical studies with imaging mass cytometry. Nature Communications (Crick Data Challenge #1)
- Wilkinson, K. A., et al., (2021). Antiretroviral Treatment-Induced Decrease in Immune Activation Contributes to Reduced Susceptibility to Tuberculosis in HIV-1/Mtb Co-infected Persons. Frontiers in Immunology (Crick Data Challenge #2)
- White, M.E., et al., (2022). OxoScan-MS: Oxonium ion scanning mass spectrometry facilitates plasma glycoproteomics in large scale. Nature Biomedical Engineering (Crick Data Challenge #3)
Many more projects have seeded ongoing collaborations and we expect to see more publications in the future!
If you have any questions at all, please email data-challenge@crick.ac.uk and we will get back to you.
All attendees at our events must adhere to our code of conduct.
Thoughts from previous participants…
Lucia Prieto-Godino, Group leader
“The Crick Data Challenge is a great initiative; as soon as I heard about it I decided to join and encouraged my students to do so. We are lucky to work in such a multidisciplinary environment at the crick. Each discipline has classical ways to analyse data and we often do not go beyond these. However, by looking at our data from a different perspective we might gain novel biological insights.”
Febe van Maldegem, Downward lab
“I can’t thank my team enough for all the effort they put into working on our project. It’s unbelievable how much we achieved in just two days. Now we can start focusing on the results, rather than the data processing.”
Ana Solaguren-Beascoa, Benevolent AI
“Collaborating with people from the Crick was a great experience – I was so impressed by the quality of all the projects. As someone with no-biomed education, I even had a difficult time deciding which project I actually wanted to help with! I was surprised by the amount of input people from industry could contribute. For the first time since I left academia, I had the total feeling I could contribute to scientific projects outside of my expertise area, by using the technical skills I’ve learned in industry. I would definitely take part again!”
Omar El Oakley, Beale Lab - Crick Data Challenge 2021
“An excellent experience! Everyone in the team was incredibly engaged and had so many creative ideas and questions - the analysis that we put together ended up giving me a whole set of new directions to pursue my research.”
Eléonore Schneegans, Imperial College London - Crick Data Challenge 2022
“I thought [the Data Challenge] was going to be a perfect opportunity to apply the skills that I work with on a day to day basis to another challenge. [Sofia] pitched her project first, and immediately I figured out that it was going to be useful for me to work on this data integration. I hope we’ll keep this collaboration going!”
Christoph Messner & Matt White, Ralser Lab
“For us, it was great to see how team members approached our problem from different angles and brought up ideas that we would have never thought of. It really is remarkable how much our team achieved within 2 days! The data challenge showed us the great collaborative atmosphere we have within the Crick, especially as we continue to work with our team beyond the challenge. Beside all of the scientific achievements, we had a great time and lot of fun, even though we only met most of the team members virtually.”
Laabiah Wasim, Tolar lab
“As a wet-lab biologist, the Crick Data Challenge provided a unique opportunity to investigate an explorative question I had, but didn’t have the bioinformatics/machine-learning skills to answer. I got to work with such brilliant individuals and going back and forth with the idea as a team accelerated its development into a project we’re hoping to continue working on. It all depends on assembling the right team of individuals, which the Crick Data Challenge provided the perfect place for!”